Enterprise IT Skill Frameworks

1 Competency Frameworks

The emphasis on competence has become international as Enterprise IT and ICT in general have become indispensable across the globe. They derive from a growing understanding of the need for a common language for competences, knowledge, skills and proficiency levels that can be understood across national borders. A common framework enables the identification of skills and competences that may be required to successfully perform duties and fulfill responsibilities in an EIT workplace. They provide a common basis for the selection and recruitment of EIT staff, as well as forming the basis for employment agreements, professional development plans, and performance evaluation for ICT professionals.

Many national and regional governments have come to require certification of EIT practitioners. Accordingly, they have developed their own definitions of ICT competences. Given the increasingly international composition of the EIT workforce, the EITBOK has included information from 3 major frameworks that are emerging as inter-regional. In general, these frameworks work towards a common understanding of competence, defined by the e-CF, for example, as “demonstrated ability to apply knowledge, skills and attitudes to achieve observable results”.

There are numerous emerging frameworks, taxonomies, and methods that are growing in visibility and use. Most of these are national frameworks that have evolved to meet their national government’s demands for EIT certifications. What is needed, though, is a consensually agreed framework that can be used an international reference model. A representative set of frameworks relevant to codifying the skills needed by practitioners in the international community of EIT professionals are:

• Skills Framework for the Information Age (Many regions/countries)
• European Competency Framework (European Union)
• i-Competency Dictionary (Japan)

Creating mappings between these frameworks and our chapters is challenging, because they come from different perspectives and have different goals. There is rarely a 100% correspondence between the frameworks and our chapters, and, despite careful consideration some subjectivity was used to create the mappings. Please take that in consideration as you review them.

2 The i-Competency Dictionary

The very detailed “i-Competency Dictionary(iCD)“ was released as a structured dictionary combining a Task Dictionary with a Skill Dictionary on 31 July 2014, although work began as early as 2004. The iCD provides tasks, skills, roles, and jobs needed for not only the conventional EIT business model such as internal EIT organization or hired system integrator but also new areas such as security, cloud, and data science.

The i-Competency Dictionary (iCD) was developed and is maintained by the Information Technology Promotion Agency (IPA) in Japan. It consists of a comprehensive Task Dictionary and a corresponding Skill Dictionary. The Task Dictionary contains all the tasks that EIT outsourcers or EIT departments are expected to accomplish, while the corresponding Skill Dictionary provides the skills required to perform those tasks.

The diagrams below show how the task and skill dictionaries are structured to be used together. The skills needed to become competent at each task are enumerated in a Task vs. Skill table. In each of the EITBOK chapters, we have shown one of the relevant tasks (at Task layer 2), along with its prerequisite skills from layers 2 - 4. In the diagrams below, we have given indications of the number of tasks and skills that are included in the full i-CD. The complete iCD Task Dictionary (Layers 1-4) and Skill Dictionary (Layers 1-4) are downloadable from the following URL: http://www.ipa.go.jp/english/humandev/icd.html

It should be noted that the IPA is also responsible for the Information Technology Engineers Examination (ITEE), which has grown into one of the largest scale national examinations in Japan, with approximately 600,000 applicants each year.

3 Skills Framework for the Information Age

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) has defined nearly 100 skills. SFIA describes 7 levels of competency which can be applied to each skill. Not all skills, however, cover all seven levels. Some reach only partially up the seven step ladder. Others are based on mastering foundational skills, and start at the fourth or fifth level of competency. It is used in nearly 200 countries, from Britain to South Africa, South America, to the Pacific Rim, to the United States. (http://www.sfia-online.org)

4 European Competency Framework

The European e-Competence Framework (e-CF) from the European Union provides a reference of 40 competences required for performance in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) workplace, using a common language for competences, knowledge, skills and proficiency levels that can be understood across Europe. The use of the e-CF by companies and organisations throughout Europe supports the transparency, mobility and efficiency of ICT sector related human resources planning and development. The EU has also created a mapping between e-CF and SFIA.

As the first sector-specific implementation of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF), the e-CF can be used by ICT service, demand and supply organizations, and by managers and HR departments, for education institutions and training bodies, including higher education, by professional associations, trade unions, market analysts and policy makers, and other organisations and parties in public and private sectors. The structure of the framework is based on four dimensions:

There are five e-CF proficiency levels, e-1 to e-5, which relate to EQF learning levels 3 to 8. For a description of the EQF levels, please see https://ec.europa.eu/ploteus/en/content/descriptors-page.

As in SFIA, not all skills are subject to all 5 levels. The following table shows the spread of competency levels for each skill.